VisionGirl
Newly Human
http://www.smartpopbooks.com/boyd-langton-and-the-fantasy-of-trust/Boyd Langton and the Fantasy of Trust
By Christopher Souza
Do you trust me?"
"With my life."
With this exchange, the bond between an Active (or Doll)
and her handler is solidified. The trust a Doll feels for her handler
is so overpowering that it withstands any imprint. Whether
she's having the time of her life on a client's yacht or on the
hunt to catch a spy, all it takes is a hypnotic suggestion from her
handler"”"Would you like a treatment?""”and she's in a van on
her way back to the Dollhouse. She doesn't know why she trusts
this strange, tall man so much, nor does she ask. Their bond is
as irrational as it is powerful.
Such was the relationship between Boyd Langton and Echo.
Early on, we saw that just as Echo was different from the other
Dolls, Boyd was different from the other handlers and staff
members of the Dollhouse. Presumably a former cop, Boyd was
often the voice of morality in the house, forcing others around
him to question their actions and justifications. While the others
saw the Dolls as playthings, pets, or even happy volunteers,
Boyd was the only one who acknowledged what they truly
were: victims of exploitation. "We're pimps and killers," he said
of himself and his co-workers, "but in a philanthropic way" ("A
Spy in the House of Love," 1-9). Unlike his boss, Adelle DeWitt,
Boyd's sense of morality seemed far too strong to allow him to
delude himself into thinking his actions were just. Nor did he
choose to ignore issues of right and wrong completely, like programmer
Topher Brink. So why, the audience wondered, was
Boyd working for an organization he so vocally despised? What
could drive a person to do something, over and over again, that
they believed was morally repugnant? And the most important
question, which I will examine in full in this essay: Why would
so many characters and audience members continue to trust in
such a man, given all this?
Boyd's motivations and past remained mysterious for the
better part of Dollhouse's all-too-short two seasons. Many speculated
that, much like Caroline and the other "volunteers" who
signed up for the Dollhouse, Boyd must have been strongly
coerced into his position. Another theory was that Boyd, like
Paul Ballard, had been attempting to bring down the company
from within the whole time. Despite his obvious ambiguity, the
audience's belief that Boyd was a good man in a bad situation
revealed a trust in the character that was almost as strong and
unwavering as Echo's. This is not entirely surprising. Early on,
Boyd got to play the hero many times, most strikingly when he
caught another handler, Hearn, in the act of sexually abusing
his own Active, Sierra. This incident revealed just how much
trust an Active was programmed to have for her handler, as well
as how unfounded and easy to exploit that bond actually was.
At the same time, it reaffirmed the audience's trust in Boyd by
placing him in sharp contrast with Hearn. We knew that Boyd
would never use Echo in such a way. He seemed to truly care
Boyd Langton and about her as a person, even when no one else believed she was
one. To borrow a phrase from another Joss Whedon show, Boyd
seemed to have "a father's love for the girl." Perhaps, the audience
began to think, Echo's trust in him was not merely programmed,
but earned.
But in the shocking final moments of "Getting Closer" (2-11),
we discovered Boyd's true motives for signing on as Echo's handler,
and they were not nearly as pure as viewers had hoped. As
it turned out, Boyd was not the morally conflicted ex-cop who
loved Echo without ever having met her original personality,
Caroline. Rather, he was the head of the Rossum Corporation
itself, the creator of the very technology he claimed to loathe,
and the person who orchestrated both Caroline's arrival at the
Dollhouse and her subsequent evolution as Echo.
This shocking revelation forced viewers to reconsider the
entire series with the new knowledge that the Boyd Langton
they knew and loved was merely an act, no more real than an
imprinted Doll. Every seemingly noble action he had taken
throughout the show, everything he'd done to help Echo in the
fight against Rossum and in her own journey of self-discovery,
was called into question. Still, many fans held on to their trust
in Boyd, insisting that he must have some noble purpose behind
his sinister actions. Perhaps he was no longer the man in charge,
and was now working to find a way to stop the apocalyptic technology
he had unleashed upon the world. Others speculated
that Boyd himself was an Active who had been programmed
with the Rossum founder's personality (even though this theory
had already been ruled out by Boyd's reaction to the memory
drug in "Echoes," 1-7). In the penultimate episode "The Hollow
Men" (2-12), we learned that Boyd was indeed trying to find a
cure for being imprinted, which he believed existed in Echo's
spinal fluid. However, that cure was only to be used on those
he deemed worthy of surviving and ruling with him over what
remained of humanity"”a "deserving few" that included Adelle,
Topher, and Echo. When Echo asked why he had spared them,
he seemed almost hurt. "You're here because you're my family,"
he explained to their stunned faces. "I love you guys."
Needless to say, Boyd's "family" wasn't as pleased with him
as he was with himself. His betrayal was particularly devastating
given that throughout the second season, he had become
more of an ally to Echo than ever before. In "Belonging" (2-4),
after discovering Echo's increasing mental development, Boyd
sent her a high-level Rossum access card, and in "Meet Jane
Doe" (2-7), he first helped her stay hidden from the Dollhouse,
and then aided in her infiltration of the place. In addition, Echo
twice demonstrated the ability to retain her bond with Boyd
even after being programmed to respond to another handler.
While she trusted and developed a romantic love for new handler
Paul Ballard, her relationship with Boyd remained just as
strong and familial as before. All of this suggested to Echo, as
well as to the audience, that Boyd was worthy of the trust she
put in him, and it made it all the more painful when that trust
proved to be nothing but a lie.
Echo wasn't the only one whose trust in Boyd ran deep.
Almost every main character chose to confide in the man at
some point in the series. Adelle trusted him enough to promote
him to head of security, even while knowing that his loyalty to
the Dollhouse may have been questionable. Topher was so close
to him that he referred to him as his "man-friend" and spent
much more time with him than with any other handler. In "A
Spy in the House of Love" (1-9), Topher discovered that someone
had been altering imprints, and suspected Boyd. Yet instead
of going straight to his superiors, he warned Boyd of his suspicions
in order to give him the opportunity to run, even though
Topher knew that decision could be his last. Claire Saunders,
the Doll-turned-doctor, started out wary of Boyd, but eventually
hid out with him after running away from the Dollhouse,
and the two began a romantic relationship. Even Paul, the one person Boyd specifically excluded from his "family," came to
trust Boyd enough to work with him in hiding Echo and in
bringing down the Dollhouse from the inside.
All of this continued to emphasize to the audience that
Boyd was good and noble, and that the trust others placed in
him made sense. But upon closer inspection, it becomes clear
that every one of these decisions was profoundly irrational. It's
true that Boyd seemed to be a trustworthy person, but what did
he ever do to prove it?
The answer, in a word, is nothing. Boyd had always been
too passive and indecisive to prove himself truly loyal to anyone.
In the first-season episode "Briar Rose" (1-11), he attacked
Paul in order to stop him from freeing Echo, thus siding with
Adelle and the Dollhouse. Yet in the second season, he sided
with Echo and Ballard in order to stop the Dollhouse. For all
Boyd's moral posturing, he never really acted on his apparent
convictions until Echo proved that her quest for independence
wouldn't be deterred. Fans of Boyd excused this by claiming that
he simply had no way to safely get Echo out of the Dollhouse's
clutches before she became self-aware, and that he really was
trying to do what was best for her in each situation. But until
"Meet Jane Doe," we never even saw Boyd consider an escape
route for Echo. He talked a good talk about the right thing to
do, but for the most part, he simply went with the flow, following
whoever seemed to be the strongest person at the time.
He didn't seem to initiate anything, instead serving more as an
enabler to the other characters' goals. At the time, most attributed
Boyd's general passivity to fear and moral conflict. But in
retrospect, almost every action (and inaction) was revealed to
be a calculated attempt at playing to both sides in order to serve
his larger agenda.
The clearest example of this was his lack of objection to
Priya being sold off to her rapist in "Belonging." Boyd rarely kept
his mouth shut in the face of a moral crisis, and this one was so
bad that any decent person would have attempted to put a stop
to it. Yet Boyd didn't so much as offer an opinion on the subject.
It was Topher, of all people, who went against Adelle's orders
and gave Priya her original personality back, while Boyd did
nothing about the situation until after the fact, when he helped
cover up Priya's murder of Nolan. Looking back, it now makes
sense that Boyd made no objection to Priya's dilemma, as she
never gained the luxury of being considered part of his "family."
He only stepped in to protect Topher, a valued asset as well as
someone whom he genuinely seemed to love, in his own twisted
way. At the same time, he used the situation as an opportunity
to test Topher's loyalty and moral character, while making sure
that Topher continued to confide in him. Had Boyd intervened
beforehand, that opportunity would have been lost.
Yet in no instance did anyone ever ask him, "How come
you didn't do anything about this until now? Why didn't you
step in and help me earlier, before things got so bad?" In the
case of Priya and Topher, it was somewhat understandable that
they would have been too in shock and too grateful to ask such
questions. But what about Echo? She showed no resentment, no
anger toward her former handler after she became self-aware.
To our knowledge, the two never even talked about the year
in which Boyd was, essentially, pimping her out. Despite seemingly
overcoming all of her other programming, and despite
Boyd's complicity in her victimization, she still looked to him
as a mentor and father figure. Some of this could be attributed
to the fact that the writers knew the show had been cancelled,
and the need to wrap up the story as swiftly as possible made
it impossible to dwell on such an issue. For her part, Echo
seemed rather committed to looking forward rather than holding
grudges, accepting Topher and Adelle as allies in the fight
against Rossum rather quickly. But at least with those two, there
was some sense that they had wronged her, and that they needed
to repent. Even Paul admitted how uncomfortable it made him
feel to take Echo out on engagements, before she reminded him
that they had to keep playing the game in order to bring down
the Dollhouse. But we saw no such conversation between Echo
and Boyd. There was no indication that he needed to be forgiven
for his sins against her, or that he even felt remorseful
about his past actions. Boyd got a free pass, while others were
more harshly judged for similar behavior. Echo's trust in him
remained completely unquestioned, right up until the moment
she regained Caroline's memories of Boyd being the Rossum
founder.
Boyd's expert skills at manipulation may account for part
of the reason his trustworthiness was so taken for granted, but
this does not fully answer the question of why the others had
such blind faith in him. This question was put forth directly,
albeit quickly, in the episode "A Love Supreme" (2-8):
TROPHER [to Boyd]: Does she still trust you with her life? And
is that because she's programmed to, or just because
you're a swell guy with a trustworthy brow?
ECHO: I'd like to think both.
Though this exchange was meant to be funny, it contained more
than a grain of truth. Boyd did have what most would call a
trustworthy face. He presented himself as a fatherly type, strong
and protective, yet also very caring. His manner of speaking and
the way he carried himself all added to the feeling that this was
a guy you'd want to watch your back. Of course, we all know
on an intellectual level that you can't tell whether someone is
good or bad just by looking at them. Still, it was hard not to be
deceived by Boyd's knowing smile and soft, kind eyes. These
features don't really mean anything on their own, but society
has led us to believe that they connote goodness and nobility.
The metaphor of the Dollhouse to our own world worked particularly
well in this scene. All of us have been "programmed,"
if you will, to project certain traits and ideals onto others based
on their appearance. In the unaired pilot, Topher explained to
Boyd how pervasive this social conditioning is:
You wear the tie because it never occurred to you not to. You
eat eggs every morning but never at night. You feel excitement
and companionship when rich men you've never met
put a ball through a net . . . And your stomach rumbles every
time you drive by a big golden arch, even if you weren't hungry
before. Everybody's programmed, Boyd.
Just as a Doll follows her handler unquestioningly, even when
programmed with an intelligent personality, we too follow certain
social norms and practices without consciously thinking
about them. We place trust in the people and the institutions
that we grow up with, simply because they are all we know. To
put it simply, we trusted Boyd because we wanted to, and, more
importantly, because we needed to. One of the criticisms of
Dollhouse early on was that because of the show's subject matter,
there was nobody to relate to or root for. Yet many fans saw
Boyd as the most likeable character on the show, and latched
on to him as the voice of the audience. People need someone
to believe in, someone to project their own feelings and desires
onto, and this is just as true while watching a TV show or
reading a book as it is in real life. Dollhouse showed this basic
human need taken it to its logical extreme, giving us characters
who literally tried to remake people into what they wanted
them to be in order to fulfill their own fantasies. By having
Boyd turn out to be the complete opposite of what we thought
he was"”without any "He's a Doll!" revelation involved"”the
audience saw how closely this fictional world resembled our
own, and how much we might resemble the clients and staff of
the Dollhouse.
Given all their experience with the mind-wiping technology,
Echo and the Dollhouse staff should have known better
than anyone not to trust someone based on how they appear.
Yet the need each one of them felt for someone to place their
trust in bordered on the pathological. Topher and Claire, both
cripplingly lonely, each took comfort in their relationships with
Boyd. Adelle DeWitt was perhaps the character most desperate
for trust. At the beginning of the series, her trust in the institution
of the Dollhouse was almost absolute. She needed more
than anything to believe that her job was giving people what
they needed. But in "A Spy in the House of Love," this fantasy
began to crumble. While on a secret engagement with a Doll,
programmed as a lover named Roger, she was informed that her
right-hand man, Laurence Dominic, was an NSA spy sent to
infiltrate the Dollhouse. She sentenced him to the Attic with her
usual icy coolness, but when she broke down in Roger's arms,
we saw just how devastated she was at this collision of reality
and fantasy. At the end of the episode, she promoted Boyd to
Dominic's old spot, showing that while her sense of trust had
been damaged, it wasn't completely destroyed. Unfortunately
for her, Boyd would prove no more worthy of her trust than
Dominic.
Echo's trust in Boyd post-composite was also motivated
by need. When she first became able to manage her multiple
imprints, Boyd was one of only two people who aided her in her
quest against the Dollhouse. It was only human nature for her to
remain latched on to Boyd in that situation. Despite her ability
to go beyond her programming, she still had a very real need
to trust her former handler. As the personification of real-world
social conditioning, Boyd represented the last "program" Echo
had to overcome in order to complete her journey from naà¯ve Doll
to self-aware heroine. It was no coincidence that Echo could only
see through Boyd's façade once she integrated her former self,
Caroline, back into her mind. By doing so, Echo was finally able
to see herself and the world around her for what they really were,
rather than what she wanted them to be. Much like activists in
the real world who fight against social institutions of sexism, racism,
and other forms of oppression, Echo had to see through the
comforting fantasies she had been imprinted to believe in, and
discover the forces that made her who she was, in order to effectively
confront the evils of the world. By losing trust in Boyd,
Echo took her final and most painful step in that journey.
Even Boyd himself revealed a need to trust other people.
His plan rested entirely on the other characters acting in ways
that he expected them to. It required that Echo go on dozens
of life-threatening missions without ever being killed or
irreparably injured. And it required that even after the others
learned of his deception, they would continue to trust in him
and look to him as their leader. It was almost as if he expected
them to be grateful for what he had done. Such a plan required
a clinically insane level of trust, not only in his own abilities,
but also, I would argue, in those of his chosen pawns. He had
to trust the others to "evolve" to their full potential. It seems
that even the most monstrous among us are not immune to
the basic human need to believe in other people. But his trust
in them, and vice versa, could only last for as long as they
remained clueless to his true nature; thus this trust was artificial,
manufactured"”programmed.
"A Spy in the House of Love" began with Echo, imprinted as
a dominatrix, discussing fantasy and trust with Boyd:
ECHO: Everyone thinks it's about the pain. It's not about the
pain, it's about trust. Handing yourself over, fully and
completely, to another human being. There's nothing
more beautiful than letting go like that.
BOYD: In my experience, that kind of trust always leads to
pain.
When boiled down to its purest essence, every engagement the
Dollhouse set up was based on the fantasy of being able to trust
someone completely. The Dolls could not say no to a client.
They could not reject them, nor could they betray them. But
this was only because the Dolls had no free will of their own.
What looked like enthusiastic consent was actually mere programming.
The same was true of the handler"“Active relationship.
Echo and Boyd may have grown to truly love and respect
one another, despite Boyd's despicable behavior, but this trust
was built on lies, and thus it was always doomed to fail. In reality,
no human being is like a Doll. Even the most innocent of
children are capable of disobedience and of hurting their loved
ones. Boyd himself proved that only a Doll could be fully trusted
in "The Hollow Men" (2-12), after Topher turned him into one
in order to stop him from hurting any more people. Boyd's last
act was to follow Echo's orders"”a role-reversal of their prior
relationship"”as he innocently activated a grenade, destroying
himself and the technology that he was about to use to essentially
end the world. Only then, after Boyd had his entire personality
removed, could the fantasy of his trustworthiness be
fulfilled.
What message are we to take from all this? Is Dollhouse
arguing that our world, which so eerily parallels its fictional
one, is one in which no one should be trusted? Which begs
another question: Is it better to have faith and lose it, or to never
believe in anything at all? These questions will likely be forever
debated, but the show did its best, in its final episode, to offer
some answers. In the series finale "Epitaph Two: Return" (2-13),
we saw that Boyd's machinations had reached far beyond his
death. Half the Earth's population had been wiped, with many
people imprinted as mindless killers, leaving a world in which
trust was an even scarcer commodity than ever before. Echo
herself had become more closed off and distant, even to Paul
Ballard, whom she once romantically pursued. Even Priya
and Anthony, whose love for each other withstood all wipes,
had drifted apart. Things looked so bleak for our heroes, and
humanity as a whole, that the possibility of trust in any person
or idea seemed almost laughable. Yet in their darkest moments,
we saw perhaps the deepest and most genuine depictions of trust
ever presented in the series. The almost maternal bond between
Adelle and Topher, Priya's love for her son and their eventual
reunion with Anthony, and Echo's final act of imprinting herself
with Paul's memories after his death, all further demonstrated
the desperate need we feel to confide in other human beings.
And they showed that sometimes, that urge can lead us to real
and lasting happiness.
The desire for trust goes beyond all reason. It is an instinct,
refined and directed by social constructions that "program"
us to trust in certain people, images, and ideas. What Boyd's
betrayal reminded us was that this need, when unquestioned,
can lead to tragic mistakes. This fact can be seen countless
times throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.
These atrocities could not have occurred without the efforts of
ordinary people who simply couldn't see through the comforting
fantasies that the powerful used to manipulate them. But
that does not mean that the need itself should be done away
with. Like most aspects of humanity, trust can be both a crippling
weakness and a profound strength, the source of our most
heinous crimes and our most heroic feats. Had Echo not trusted
in her friends, none of them would have survived the apocalypse
and come out stronger. But Paul, Priya, Anthony, and even
Adelle and Topher all earned this trust in a way that Boyd never
did. Echo questioned them, tested them; she didn't just follow
them blindly.
Echo's journey from unquestioning obedience to superawareness
mirrored that of every person who has ever woken
up to find that someone close to them isn't what they seem, or
that one of their core beliefs is based on a lie. She showed that
when the Boyds in our life betray us and we seem all alone,
we may not be able to "go back to sleep" and return to being
as wholly trusting as we used to be. But we can use our new
awareness to make more informed decisions, to learn to control
our needs and put them to more constructive ends. Just as
Echo could never erase all of the many personalities that occupied
her brain, we can never truly get rid of our own "programming,"
whether it is social or biological or both. What Dollhouse
did urge us to do, perhaps more than any other television show
ever created, was to question that programming, to understand
it, so that we can decide for ourselves which people and ideas
we can trust and which are mere fantasies, only as real as we
want them to be.
From: [ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935251988/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=benbellaboo09-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=39937"]Inside Joss' Dollhouse: From Alpha to Rossum: Jane Espenson: 9781935251989: Amazon.com: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rDD32ychL.@@AMEPARAM@@51rDD32ychL[/ame]
(Which by the way, is $0.99 for Kindle!)
